Indefinite Detentions for Immigrants
by Pamela LeaveyNote to all immigrants: you have no rights. The Bush administration said on Monday that “immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts,” thus opening a “new legal front in the fight over the rights of detainees.”
In court documents filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., the Justice Department said a new anti-terrorism law being used to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay also applies to foreigners captured and held in the United States.
Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was arrested in 2001 while studying in the United States. He has been labeled an “enemy combatant,” a designation that, under a law signed last month, strips foreigners of the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.
That law is being used to argue the Guantanamo Bay cases, but Al-Marri represents the first detainee inside the United States to come under the new law. Aliens normally have the right to contest their imprisonment, such as when they are arrested on immigration violations or for other crimes.
Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney for Al-Marri said, “It’s pretty stunning that any alien living in the United States can be denied this right. It means any non-citizen, and there are millions of them, can be whisked off at night and be put in detention.”
Glenn Greenwald notes: “The denial of habeas corpus rights is the most Draconian aspect of the MCA, as it authorizes detention for life with no real review and no meaningful opportunity to prove one’s innocence.”
Sen. Chris Dodd said prior to the election that he regrets the decision not to filibuster the MCA: “I regret now that I didn’t do it . . . This is a major, major blow to who we are.” And Sen. Pat Leahy, soon-to-be Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has confirmed that he is “drafting a bill to undo portions of a recently passed law that prevent terrorism detainees from going to federal court to challenge the government’s right to hold them indefinitely.”
Filed under: Bush Admin, In The News, Politics, Republicans | Get Permalink or trackback |
Granted I keep my thermostat low and the ‘office’ is in an unheated enclosed porch, these things still give me the shivers,
Your headline is misleading – it reads “immigrants.” Your first sentence is misleading: “Note to all immigrants – you have no rights.”
My grandparents are immigrants. Should I be concerned they’re going to be whisked away to Guantanamo in the middle of the night?
I’m not, of course. Because they’re by definition, yes, “immigrants.” And they’re also legal citizens.
No distinction is made between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants in your take of this story.
Why is that?
*Your* take on stories like this make me embarrassed to be a Democrat.
Ted
Evidently you did not click on the linked AP News story quoted to see what their headline is — “US: Immigrants may be held indefinitely”
The idea that the MCA’s destruction of habeus corpus only applies to non-citizens is a myth. In response to Ted, your grandmother COULD be whisked away in the middle of the night and held indefinately. The determination of ‘enemy combatant’ is the sole discretion of the president, quite independent of US citizenship.
There is the possibility of someone deciding that a legal immigrant is actually an illegal immigrant, imprisoning them without the protection of habeas corpus. It is unlikely that it would be applied to long standing immigrants, those with dependents born here would be risky, and certainly not those who have attained citizenship.
If memory serves, I believe Bush pulled something like this in Texas, denying detained illegal immigrants the right to notify their families where they were. The issue was that the requirement was part of an international treaty. The Texas legal response was that the State had never signed the treaty.
BTW, Ted. Sorry to call you on this BUT,
is the kind of comment we try to avoid here. It does not add to the argument and creates alienation within the party.
Obviously we are not perfect and I’m sure there are some examples in the 4000+ posts that could be used to show that. It is our goal. We have enough ugliness and dirt from the GOP. There has to be a way we can engage in disagreement without telling each other off.
We also have had plenty of comments correcting posts that we welcome and follow up on.
Thanks, SD law student.
I should have said that the immigrants who have attained citizenship may not be as much at risk as those who have not. As you point out, when it comes to being fingered as an enemy combatant, the rights are suspended.